Royal (Imperial) Manticore Army

Jaxon06 wrote:So now that the SKM is the SEM, when will Parliament authorize the formation of Legions?

There's no point in having legions. You might as well ask when the US will start forming legions. It doesn't make sense in the context of the SEM. While Silesia is still in the process of amalgamation, the Talbott Quadrant is fully integrated into the SEM, and as such the populations are citizens of the SEM. This isn't like a Roman Legion where service would grant citizenship.

Oh Duckk......

Do you have something to say, or do you just feel like making passive-aggressive swipes at me?

Alizon wrote:Well I've seen a lot of comments here about the fact that the RMA is really little more than a garrisoning force. After all, you can always drop rocks on the offending planet if you control the orbitals and the "bad guys" won't give up.

All of that is true in the same way that Nuclear Weapons made Armies and Navies of the late 20th Century obsolete.

The theory is exactly the same, you have a weapon of mass destruction that will devastate the enemy if they resist. The problem is, are you willing to use it?

There's lots of downsides to dropping rocks on enemy planets, first and foremost of these is that if you do it, the enemy is likely to return the favor sometime in the future. There's also the scenes of utter devastation being visited on significant populations centers killing untold numbers of civilians in one fell swoop.

So you take the orbitals of a planetary system and you issue your surrender order and they refuse. Are you really going to devastate the planet? Is that going to be an acceptable response to the other star nations and your own people?

Just like we found out that nuclear weapons were not the end all be all of warfare, just as we discovered that we weren't willing to use the nuclear option when other options existed, it's highly likely that dealing with a recalcitrant enemy population would be a much more difficult thorn to deal with than simply dropping some c-fractional rock on them. And that is where the RMA could represent an alternative approach.

So far that hasn't happened yet. But it's certainly something that could happen.

Of course one significant difference is that on Earth it's hard to secure most borders. So if someone rolls over the border of an ally (or infiltrates guerrilla forces or even outright terrorists) 20th and 21st century norms say you can't just nuke the capital of the country sending / supporting them. So you still need significant conventional forces to deal with the incursion or go after the supporting power.

In the Honorverse ship building and travel beyond the planet both require orbital travel. So if a planet is refusing to surrender you have the option of destroying their orbital infrastructure and pulling out; or of leaving a small blockade force to run down or kill any shuttles trying to leave the planet or any ships approaching. On earth it's trivial to hide small arms, and not especially hard to disperse and hide even bigger systems like tanks or SAMs. You can do the same in the Honoverse but there's no ground borders to sneak them across, so if they're all down on the planet and I'm in orbit they're irrelevant. And you can't exactly hide spare BCs in a cave somewhere. (You might be able to hide them powered down in the asteroids, but the shuttle needed to get to them is going to be damned obvious)


So it seems to me that unless there's a particular resource you need from that planet (which might be intelligence; people, records, or samples) you don't have to assault and seize it. Especially not immediately.


And you may perform selective orbital bombardment to compel the planet to surrender, but if you decide there's a better strategy you can hold off.


Of course taking a hands off / blockage approach means you can't enforce your directives on the ground. I'm just saying that many times you can achieve your immediate objectives without controlling the planet. Wreck their offensive ability, their orbital industry, and if you don't go down in the mud they can't even play guerrilla soldier effectively. (And it'll be years before they can effectively contributed to their sides war effort, even if your blockading force is driven off)

Duckk wrote:What "mass collateral damage"? I just explained that orbital bombardment can be as neat or messy as you want it to be. If I'm dropping a KEW on a missile battery or command center, I don't have to flatten the entire countryside along with it.

Of course you have to hit it. Which if you are targeting a ground-Space defense system is not going to be easy or something you can do with a singe round. An armored unit would be able to swat KEWs pretty effectively, and I'd bet on a grav tank surviving a near miss in better shape than an apartment block.

kzt wrote:

Duckk wrote:What "mass collateral damage"? I just explained that orbital bombardment can be as neat or messy as you want it to be. If I'm dropping a KEW on a missile battery or command center, I don't have to flatten the entire countryside along with it.

Of course you have to hit it. Which if you are targeting a ground-Space defense system is not going to be easy or something you can do with a singe round. An armored unit would be able to swat KEWs pretty effectively, and I'd bet on a grav tank surviving a near miss in better shape than an apartment block.

And who's fault is it if that grav tank is near the apartment block?

Duckk wrote:Do you have something to say, or do you just feel like making passive-aggressive swipes at me?

I'm sorry if I was being too vague... I was distressed that you had so quickly dismissed my petition to parliament to authorize the formation of Legions....

Duckk wrote:

Zakharra wrote:It doesn't take much for a world to de-civilize, or the population could be stubborn enough they won't surrender easily. An occupation could be resisted and tie up several brigades if the population was willing to take the casualties. As long as the power holding the high ground (space) doesn't just decide to say 'screw this' and use nuclear And KEW bombardments to flatten everything. Remember the SEM/GA isn't likely to do that even if they do hold the high orbitals. They are much less inclined to bombard a world that doesn't surrender even if the defending fleet is destroyed. If the population remained solid, a world could easily be a meat grinder for the GA if they aren't willing to inflict massive casualties or lay waste to entire areas/deny/destroy power plants and factories to get the population to stop resisting.

And as the infodump I linked to showed, the attacker is fully justified in destroying every militarily relevant target from space should they face such intransigence. It's really hard to resist when your weapons are vaporized.

Plus, it's going to be really hard for the defenders to muster up the morale and the will to continue resisting after the hundredth KEW flattens a base, armory, or whatever. By that point the attackers have made it clear to even the most die-hard defender that defeat is inevitable. This all loops back to practicable breach that David mentions in the infodump.

Could there be such situations where the entire planet is insane enough to refuse to bow to reality? Possibly. But they are going to be very few and far between, and there certainly wasn't any in the Havenite Wars. In which case yes, you would probably send in the Army, but, again, such situations are going to be incredibly rare.

An example would be Beowulf or the Manticore system worlds, do you think they would meekly surrender and not resist SL occupation if the SL managed to occupy orbital space?

If there were no hope for immediate relief, then of course they would surrender. They're not stupid. Again, if the attackers hold the orbitals, then the outcome is pretty much inevitable. So why get your people killed for no gain? Whether it's pitched warfare in the streets or dropping a KEW on your head, the end result is the same. Choosing to resist is just going to inflate the body count, and blow whatever little goodwill at the negotiating table you might have had if you had peacefully surrendered.

I admit that the Mandarins and the higher officers in the SLN are far more likely to use bombardment to pacify the worlds, the chances of the GA/Manticore doing so is much lower. They seem more likely to be content to hold the system and leave the planet to its own devices for a few decades until the population changes its mind.

To quote Terekhov, "Why is it that people like you always think you're more ruthless than people like me?" That should really sum up what is wrong with your comment. If the objective is to take the planet, then you take the planet. And if there's a way to for the attacker avoid casualties - potentially massive ones - and thereby preserving it as a fighting force for future use, then it is irresponsible not to take that option. If the defender is so stubborn as to choose to resist when there is no way out, then any casualties suffered by them are on the defenders' heads, not the attackers.

True points, but I am thinking more in line of asymmetrical warfare, ie guerrilla warfare. There's be no open bases to destroy, no weapons stations and the like, just a spread out force of fighters (countryside or urban areas) that are actively resisting the occupation. It wouldn't take much to have resisting. With a system average of 2-6 billion people, even 2% resisting will be in the millions. And with the systems being developed, simple explosive weaponry and the like can be made in basement/underground machine shops or in the bowels of mountains or mega-cities.

I know and acknowledge that most worlds wouldn't resist, but to think some wouldn't isn't taking human nature into account.

crewdude48 wrote:[quote="kzt]
Of course you have to hit it. Which if you are targeting a ground-Space defense system is not going to be easy or something you can do with a single round. An armored unit would be able to swat KEWs pretty effectively, and I'd bet on a grav tank surviving a near miss in better shape than an apartment block.[/quote]

And who's fault is it if that grav tank is near the apartment block?[/quote]

Kzt, just doing a little math (and it may be wrong, math is not my strongest suit), a guided KEW launched at 100g's from 600km (I'm assuming it's not a straight down-the throat shot) will take about 34 seconds to arrive on-target at around Mach 98 (34km/sec~73,000 Mph)-which isn't much time, even in the Honorverse, to acquire, target and fire--and if you have more than one approaching on different vectors, then life has just gotten more complex down in your Missile battery bunker or tank.

NOTE: I don't have a clue at KEW speed, so I may be fast or slow--100g's is approximately 1km sec/sec, and I like whole numbers--easier on the brain.

IMHO as always. YMMV.

Zakharra wrote:True points, but I am thinking more in line of asymmetrical warfare, ie guerrilla warfare. There's be no open bases to destroy, no weapons stations and the like, just a spread out force of fighters (countryside or urban areas) that are actively resisting the occupation. It wouldn't take much to have resisting. With a system average of 2-6 billion people, even 2% resisting will be in the millions. And with the systems being developed, simple explosive weaponry and the like can be made in basement/underground machine shops or in the bowels of mountains or mega-cities.

I know and acknowledge that most worlds wouldn't resist, but to think some wouldn't isn't taking human nature into account.

Yes some planets resist even after surrender (San Martin comes to mind). In which case, yes, you would need to keep a relatively large garrison in system (like San Martin).

However, I think that you're underestimating the intelligence gathering and counterinsurgency capabilities available in the Honorverse. This can be seen in several books, such as SoS, SoF, and CoG. If you don't have access to heavy, modern weapons to offset the occupier's heavy, modern weapons, trying to resist the occupation is still a losing proposition. All the resistance movements in those books hinged on having weapons which could fight off powered armor and armored vehicles.